5E Adventure Review: A Scream in the Night

A Scream in the Night is the first of the Chaos in Melvaunt trilogy of adventures designed for convention play by the team at Baldman Games; M. Sean Molloy is the designer for this one. It features the adventurers solving puzzles left by a murderer loose in the city. It is designed for characters of levels 1-4.

This is a very enjoyable adventure, playable in a single evening; it’s designed for a four-hour slot, and took a little over two hours to play on our tables. This is an adventure that could play significantly longer depending on how much your players role-play with the NPCs, and how good they are solving puzzles.

The combats in this scenario pay a lot of attention to position; more than I typically do. Those, like me, who play using “Theatre of the Mind” rather than miniatures may benefit from drawing out a sketch map to better focus the position of the combatants in everyone’s minds.

What I like most about this adventure is the level of invention: it isn’t content to keep things the same. There are new puzzles and challenges for the players to deal with at every turn. The final chase scene – through a landscape of chaotic planar intrusions – is a stand-out, and played very well for our group.

The adventure does require quite a bit from the DM. It is well-written, but the situations are sometimes intricate and challenging to properly convey to the players. You also need to be very attentive to how your players are approaching the puzzles. I think they’re fantastic – very inventive and ones that make you feel good about solving them, even if (like my group), it only takes a couple of minutes. However, groups who aren’t inclined that way may get very frustrated; in such cases it behoves the DM to deemphasize the puzzles and concentrate on the other elements of the adventure.

You only get a cursory glance at Melvaunt here; more will come in the later parts of the trilogy.

All-in-all, this is an impressive start to the Baldman Games adventures.

One thought on “5E Adventure Review: A Scream in the Night

  1. Great puzzles and ingenuity in encounter design would make an exceptional module, if someone actually went through the thing and cleared up the mechanics for the monsters and scripted events. As it is a RAW obsessed DM can easily ruin your experience. Common sense guidance is advised.

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